By KRISTEN MILLARES YOUNG, P-I REPORTER

Updated 10:00 pm, Thursday, November 29, 2007

King County Executive Ron Sims has told the Port of Seattle that the deal to convert the Eastside rail corridor into a hiking and biking trail will be off the table if the port decides to keep the tracks intact.

"If the rails are not removed, King County cannot afford to develop an interim trail," wrote Sims in a strongly worded five-page letter to the Seattle port's chief executive and commission president on Thursday.

"We have no interest in leasing the corridor for any other purpose in the short term," he added.

Tough cookies, countered a majority of the port's five-member board of elected commissioners Thursday, who nonetheless said they wanted to work it out with the county.

Although the commission has not taken a formal vote on the matter, Commissioners John Creighton, Lloyd Hara and Alec Fisken said they would support spending $103 million to buy the trail whether or not King County was on the hook to redevelop it.

Of the three, only Fisken was steadfast in wanting the tracks to remain; commission President Creighton said the matter needed to be re-examined after the failure of the roads-transit package Proposition 1, and Hara said he was open to hearing both sides.

"There's value to the port going ahead with the transaction and bringing the corridor into the public domain with or without the county," Creighton said. "While we are intent on reaching a resolution that addresses our interests and the county's interests, the point is getting this corridor into public ownership."

The county's preliminary cost estimate of building a hiking and biking trail next to the track ranged between $160 million to $230 million. Building that trail on top of the flat area where the tracks had been removed is estimated at $44 million.

If the port does not decide by Dec. 7 to remove the tracks, Sims wrote, the entire deal is off -- including the county's titling to the port of the 12- acre Fisher Flour Mills site on Harbor Island and its agreement to consult with the port on any major Boeing Field developments.

Sims wrote that the county was committed to keeping the possibilities open for the corridor to be used as a railway in the future.

But, he wrote, "King County has no desire to accept the responsibility and liability of developing the existing rails into a commuter rail or light rail system. Nor do we have the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to do so."

As the deal stands now, the corridor's single railroad track would remain open for freight service between Woodinville and Snohomish; the rest of the corridor, between Renton and Woodinville, would be leased to the county.

BNSF Railway also declined to comment, but has said in the past that the condition of the tracks is too poor to sustain frequent use; currently, the track is used to send fuselages to The Boeing Co.'s Renton plant.

"If the port insists the tracks be left, I can see why King County would back off -- it is a cost issue and a safety issue," Huckabay said. "There's not enough right of way to do both."

It is possible to have passenger trains and pedestrians both use the corridor at a much lower cost, said Bruce Agnew, the director of the Cascadia Center at Discovery Institute, which just commissioned a study that found it would be possible to modernize the 42 miles of track to accommodate small diesel commuter trains for $37 million.

"We need to look very closely and not make hasty decisions, like ripping out 31 miles of perfectly usable track," Agnew said.